Serving the local community: Reed’s Dairy provides community with farm-fresh dairy for over 75 years

In 1955, Roy Reed and his two brothers bought a herd of Holsteins and started milking cows for a living. Seven years later, in 1962, the family installed their own processing and bottling equipment. This was the beginning of Reed’s Dairy, one of Idaho’s most popular dairies and milk delivery services.

Today, the family operation continues processing, bottling and delivering milk to their community in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and their farm-fresh products are as popular as ever.

Expanding the operation

“At first, we had our dairy store and milk delivery service. In 1981, we developed our ice cream recipe and started making ice cream. Then, in 1986 we started manufacturing cheese,” explains Alan Reed, Roy’s son and current president of the operation. 

“Today, we have two stores in Idaho Falls, Idaho and two stores in Boise, Idaho,” Alan continues. “We sell farm-fresh milk, chocolate milk, cheese and hand-crafted, small-batch ice cream. We have 49 different flavors, including huckleberry, licorice, grasshopper, monster cookie and coconut almond fudge.”

Reed’s Dairy has also continued their traditional home-delivery services to locals in the Idaho Falls and Treasure Valley areas. 

“Our home delivery service gets our artisan dairy foods and a variety of farm-fresh produce delivered to our customers’ doorsteps. The service is available as far west as Ontario, as far east as Mountain Home, as far north as Emmett and as far south as Kuna,” Alan notes. 

Ice cream, cheese curds and chocolate milk can also be shipped anywhere in the U.S., and during the holidays, Reed’s Dairy sells eggnog and chocolate nog. 

Serving the community

Although the dairy operation has grown tremendously over the years, the Reed family’s preeminent goal of providing the local community with farm-fresh dairy products has remained unwavering.

“Our goal is to provide the most natural, best-tasting dairy products to our customers,” Alan states. “We make things the old-fashioned way – a lot of it is done by hand. We want to provide our customers and local community with a true farm-to-table products for their families.” 

Reed’s Dairy places a huge emphasis on the local community.

“We try to do a lot of community events at our dairy,” Alan notes. “We host many different parties, from Halloween to Easter. We like to be involved. We also think it is important to give the community an opportunity to come out to the dairy and see where their dairy products come from.”

“We like to give back to our community for what they do for us, which is being wonderful, loyal customers,” he adds. 

In light of changes caused by COVID-19, Alan says, “Our customers are still consuming dairy, and our cattle still have to be milked, regardless of the pandemic. We were bottling our milk in reusable glass bottles, but we have since suspended the glass bottles and turned to temporary ones.”

“We really haven’t made any other changes. It has been business as usual,” he adds. “We are still milking our cows, and we are still serving our community.” 

For more information, visit reedsdairy.com.

Hannah Bugas is the managing editor for the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.